'Supergirl' Gives Us A Classic Man Of Steel By Letting Superman Be Superman

If you enjoyed last week’s premiere of Supergirl, you’re in for a treat tonight. This evening’s episode is the conclusion of a “here’s the new status quo” two-parter that puts the second season into focus. No spoilers, but several major characters will find themselves in new places by the end of the hour. And yes, we’ll get to see more of Tyler Hoechlin’s scene-stealing (but not show-stealing) turn as Clark Kent/Superman.

I got to see the episode in question last week, as part of a media event that included a Q&A with Hoechlin and executive producer Andrew Kreisberg. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the show, which stumbled a bit after the pilot but roared back to life after the mid-season break. It (like really all of the CW DC Comics shows, even Arrow) hit the ground running this season. That’s for another day, but dear me what a time it is to be a DC Comics fan.

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But what strikes me about Hoechlin’s portrayal of the Man of Steel isn’t that he’s one of the very best live-action Superman depictions we’ve ever seen, or even that the producers managed to bring in Superman without remotely taking the focus away from Melissa Benoist’s (still delightful) Supergirl. Of note, the show didn’t feel the need to create artificial rivalry or competition between the two of them, nor did it make the classic “new character shows up” mistake of making the leads incompetent. They were happy to see each other and were mutually supportive of each other, and their mutual affection is contagious. What stood out is just how long it’s been since we’ve seen a Superman like this on our screens.

“I think that inherently my biggest thing about Superman is, I think that he is always doing what he wishes anybody else would do if they could do what he could do.” That’s the money quote from the above Q&A concerning describing Hoechlin’s two-episode portrayal of the Last Son of Krypton. The character was introduced last week as a resoundingly kind, chipper and caring would-be superhero. His support to Kara wasn’t about superheroism or helping her fight a villain she couldn't handle but was about balancing the whole Kara/Supergirl equation, which will clearly be this season's focus.

That continues this week, even as he comes into understandable conflict with David Harewood’s Hank Henshaw about why the DEO keeps kryptonite in storage. Truth be told, I sided with Hank on this one, but neither side is truly “wrong.” This Superman is the idealized version of the character, someone who has been doing it long enough to be really good at it and to utterly embrace its rewards while also successfully balancing the whole Superman/Clark Kent thing.

I could have done without the “klutzy Clark Kent” bit, but A) this show makes no bones about being indirectly set in the Richard Donner universe and B) the reveal that it’s not entirely an act lent an immediate relatability upon introduction.

I watched the first two episodes basically back to back. I watched the premiere as it aired on Monday night and then the second episode on the CW lot on Tuesday morning. I realized that the utterly confident, entirely aspirational, and downright heroic Superman isn’t just a contrast to the current movie version but a contrast to how the character has been portrayed in live-action for the last twenty years.

It’s easy to say “Oh, this version of Superman is closer to my Superman than the one in the DC Films universe!” But, truth be told, it’s been nearly twenty years since we’ve seen a live-action Superman like this. Dean Cain gave us my favorite live-action Clark Kent in ABC’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. But that comedic melodrama, which had a superb first season and then struggled a bit for the next three years, ended in June of 1997. And it was followed four years later by the WB’s groundbreaking Smallville, which turns 15-years old this week.

Say what you will about Tom Welling’s work as “the man who would be Superman,” but that show never actually got around to showing him as Superman. Even the series finale, where he technically took the costume and the mantle, offered not a single full body shot of our hero as our hero. And right smack in the middle of that show’s 10-year run, we got Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns.

That 2006 movie, a quasi-sequel to Superman and Superman II, offered a Superman who had returned to Earth after a five-year sabbatical only to discover that humanity had moved on in his absence. Brandon Routh gave it his all, and he is an absolute delight in the CW universe as The Atom. But that film did provide us with a sad, conflicted and relatively grumpy Man of Steel who couldn’t get over the notion that the friends and lovers he had abandoned without so much as a note had dared to get on with their lives.

The film made more than Batman Begins, $391 million versus $375m. But it cost way too much (around $270m, which to be fair included development costs for a whole bunch of other canceled Superman movies) and inspired little excitement over the theoretical next chapter. Oddly enough, Superman Returns was less cheerful and optimistic than the “dark and realistic” Batman movie from the previous summer. But since the conventional wisdom stated that the film failed due to a lack of action, as opposed to just not being a good movie, no one saw the need to “let Superman be Superman.”

Smallville ended in the summer of 2011, and two years later we got Man of Steel. Say what you will about the Zack Snyder film, but I still believe that it was a set-up to a Superman franchise which featured a tested-and-ready Superman having embraced his potential for heroism and inspiration. In an alternate world where the third-act carnage didn’t inspire controversy (and Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. didn’t arbitrarily announce a Batman versus Superman movie in order to “win” the 2013 SDCC), a theoretical Man of Steel 2 may have featured a Henry Cavill Superman closer to his deliriously charming turn as Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

But come what may, we got Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which presented a questioning and doubtful Man of Steel who was crippled by the fact that his every action would be construed as a political act with potentially negative consequences. And that was in itself a story worth telling, as I still believe that a version of that film absent an undue focus on Batman would have been notably more worthwhile. Now that Kal-El is dead, at least until he is resurrected in Justice League.

Whether or not Geoff Johns and Jon Berg use that resurrection to offer what amounts to a “born again” Superman I cannot say. But Hoechlin’s comparatively upbeat and aspirational Superman qualifies as the exception to the rule. This version of Superman represents the first time in a generation or two that we’ve seen a fully aspirational live-action Superman like this on any size screen.

We had ten years of Tom Welling’s “almost Superman” and three feature films starring a “work-in-progress”/ “plagued by doubt” Superman. Again, "different" is not "bad," and I have more issues with the stories told by Superman Returns and Dawn of Justice than I do with the actors donning the iconic costume. But there is something to be said by how long it's been since we've had a Superman like this in live-action form. Almost by default, this is the most rousing live-action Last Son of Krypton we’ve had since the Richard Donner version that started it all.

So yes, Supergirl is awesome, and Tyler Hoechlin is a wonderful Last Son of Krypton. Whether this guest appearance, which I should stress doesn’t remotely resemble a backdoor pilot, should lead to a stand-alone television series, I cannot say. You can make the case that part of what made this version so endearing is that he was a supporting character, sharing the limelight with other super-heroic folks and bouncing off already established supporting characters (the real challenge is how this show will function with noticeably less Calista Flockhart).

Maybe, like Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, this version of Superman was “super” precisely because he got to show up, be wonderful and mostly step aside for the core conflicts. Maybe Cavill will have more fun as part of a Justice League ensemble than he did as a loner. But the very existence of this cheerful and optimistic Superman in the CW television world makes the existence of the more deconstructive movie version that much more “valid.”

That the CW presents arguably “original recipe” versions of these iconic heroes makes it that much more okay for the movie versions to go “extra crispy.” But we should also remember that for reasons both valid (“How can we play around with the Superman mythos?”) and not-so-valid (“Boy Scouts are boring!”), the version of Superman who flew into National City last week is an aberration by today’s standards.

Supergirl gave us a Superman that we need/deserve right now, and it did so without making its title character any less impressive. So yeah, whether you like the DC Films offerings or not, you really should be watching Supergirl. And you have no idea how excited I am for next month's super-mega "Arrow-verse" cross-over event. With any luck, we'll be getting two great Justice League movies over the next 12 months.

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I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing ...